The Carolina Hurricanes turned a 2-0 hole into a 4-3 overtime win Thursday night, beating the Vegas Golden Knights to tie the Stanley Cup Final at 1-1. Seth Jarvis finished it at 3:56 of overtime, and Carolina suddenly has the series back on even terms after looking one bad night from a deep problem.
That mattered because the Hurricanes had spent much of the playoffs waiting for the kind of goals their top line and power play were supposed to supply. Instead, those units had sputtered, and Carolina entered Thursday 7 for 58 on the power play, a 12.1% rate that sat far below its 24.9% mark in the regular season. On this night, though, the special teams and the finish finally matched the stakes.
Jordan Staal redirected Shayne Gostisbehere's shot for a power-play goal that put Carolina ahead 3-2 after the Hurricanes had trailed by two entering the third period. The comeback did not come in a straight line. Carolina scored three unanswered goals to seize control, then watched Vegas tie it late and force overtime before Jarvis ended it for his fourth playoff goal.
Jarvis has been the kind of scorer Carolina has needed all spring. He led the Hurricanes with 32 regular-season goals, and this one gave the home crowd the first clean payoff of a series that had already become a grind. The result also wiped out the pressure that comes with staring at an 0-2 deficit in a short series, even if the margin for error remains almost nonexistent.
Bill Burniston knows something about long shots turning real. In 2007, he told his wife he did not know how he would pull it off, but he wanted to work for USA Baseball and the Carolina Hurricanes, and by 2015 he was the Hurricanes' strength and conditioning coach. That career arc is background to the bigger point here: Carolina found a way to stay alive in a Final that had already begun to feel like every shift could swing the series.
Game 3 was scheduled for Saturday in Las Vegas, with all games set to begin at 8 p.m. and be seen on ABC11. The Hurricanes do not have to chase the series now. They just have to carry one more night like Thursday into the building where the next one starts.
